The information age has produced an explosion of content for people to read. This content includes traditional media such as books, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, manuals, guides, references, articles, reports, documents, etc. that exist in print, as well as electronic media in which the aforesaid works are provided in digital form. The Internet has further enabled an even wider publication of content in the form of document downloads, such as portable document files and e-books.
Given the vast sea of content that people encounter, it is not uncommon for a person to read something and later recall a memorable phrase or subject, but not remember the exact source of the phrase or subject. The person may attempt to obtain recently read items in an effort to find the phrase or subject, but searching these items in this manner can be tedious, time consuming, and unfruitful. A person may also simply wish to research a particular subject in a set of books or other content that the person owns, has read, or is otherwise aware of.
Separately, various search engines have attempted to catalogue Web pages available on the Internet. However, given the enormous amount of content published electronically on the Internet, searching the entire Internet for a phrase or subject in a particular source the reader recently read can be similar to finding a needle in a haystack. The reader may have to wade through pages and pages of search results provided by search engines, and in the end, may still be unable to locate the desired source. Moreover, the desired source may not have been published on the Internet in the first place, and thus would not be included in this type of search.
Electronic searching of public library catalogs is also known, but such searching is limited to bibliographic information and other meta-information that describe the library content. Full text searching of public library content is not available, and even if it were, the search may produce results from sources that are not of interest to the user.
What is needed is a system and method of providing a library of content that a user can personalize and search electronically, in which the location of specified search terms in the user's personalized library is reported. Desirably, images of some or all of the text, pictures, and other features surrounding the located search terms would be provided for immediate review by the user, consistent with permissions granted for providing such content to the user. Restricted content would be suppressed. The present invention addresses these needs and other shortcomings that currently exist.